Dental Implant Mistakes
The one area where I would advise patients to be
most
wary about where they get their dental care is with dental implants. This
is the number one area of litigation for dental malpractice claims.
The complication when there are dental implant
mistakes is that when something goes wrong with a crown or a root canal
treatment, the worst that could happen is that you lose a tooth. When
something goes wrong with dental implants, you can lose a jawbone or part
of a face. The complications become more serious.
And because this is such a "hot" area of dentistry,
there are many dentists who are trying to help their patients by getting
involved in this area of dentistry. The reason that is generating so many
dental implant mistakes is that implant dentistry was not a part of the
dental school curriculum of the vast majority of dentists in practice
today. Only now are dental schools starting to incorporate adequate
training in implantology. And as they try to do this, they are faced with
a curriculum that is already jammed so full, they don't know what to cut
out so that they can adequately cover implantology.
The moral: watch the credentials of your implant
dentist. Make sure he or she has extensive continuing education to be abreast
of all the current knowledge in implantology. And above all, don't go price shopping.
Areas of Possible Dental Implant Mistakes
Here are the areas where you may experience
problems:
 | Dental implants impinging on nerves in the lower jaw. There is a key nerve that
runs through the middle of the lower jaw. When there are missing teeth
and the bone begins to resorb, this nerve can end up being even closer
to the surface than normal. The position of this nerve needs to be
pinpointed in three dimensions, so it takes three-dimensional CT scans to
be able to avoid it. |
| Dental implants placed where there is inadequate
bone support. If there isn't enough bone, you need to have bone grafts.
In the attempt to economize, there may be a temptation to shortcut this. |
| Implant fixtures placed in sinuses or other nasal
cavities in the upper jaw. Not only will this cause problems in the
sinus or the nose, but there will also be inadequate bony support making
them tend to come loose. |
| Using substandard fixtures. For more information
about this problem, please see our
cheap dental implants page. These fixtures need to be made to
exacting standards of high-quality materials, or there can be problems
with fit, longevity, or biocompatibility. |
| You can have medical conditions that affect the
success of the dental implants. The dentist needs to be very thorough in
discovering all relevant elements of your medical history. |
| There are other difficulties that are beyond the
control of the dentist. You may just have a biotype that doesn't respond
well to dental implants. |
For more information on dental implant mistakes, please see Dr.
Arthur Chal's web page on
dental implant failure. Dr. Chal is a world-renowned implant dentist
practicing in Phoenix, Arizona.
This information is provided for you by the mynewsmile.com cosmetic
dentist referral service, and was personally written by Dr. David Hall. If
you would like to be referred to a cosmetic dentist who would be expert in
all of these questions about tooth bleaching, please see our
cosmetic dentist referral
page.
Click here for
referral to an expert cosmetic dentist.
